3 ms·
Star Citizen can change gaming for the better. It can break the corporate-induced cycle of rehashing old game formats with slightly better graphics to siphon of
by unity1001 4y ago
Star Citizen can change gaming for the better. It can break the corporate-induced cycle of rehashing old game formats with slightly better graphics to siphon off money instead of providing more gameplay.
Consider this: We need something new - there is absolutely no need for another rehashed clone of Privateer/Freelancer/Whatever. We played hundreds of such games. Nobody has been able to bring a new paradigm into this game genre since 1980s. Its the same old thing.
With the hardware power that our computers attained since 1980s, we should be playing games that are much bigger in scope and much more immersive right now. We are not. We are playing the same rehashed games with better graphics. The gameplay is almost the same and cheap. Every major company that consolidated the gaming space is just rehashing this genre like all the other genres for profit, without bringing in anything new.
Star Citizen is trying to change that. Its trying to create an entire universe in which you can make your space coffee, eat your space breakfast and move into whatever adventure you want in a living, breathing universe. Its trying to put is in something that is worth our time and attention today, instead of a rehashed copy/paste of whatever successful simplicity that was invented in the earlier decades.
Its going to be difficult. Even making one living, breathing space-city for people to experience is like making a singular, major MMO game. Making a planet - even bigger. An universe? Phenomenal work.
It was obvious that there would be needed gigantic funding on an ongoing basis and A LOT of work. It was obvious that a lot of developers would burn out on the way. It was certain that it would take a lot of time.
STILL, its worth it. We need SOMETHING NEW now. Since 1970s, we got CPU power increase a TRILLION FOLD, but the games we play today STILL have the gameplay of 1970s' successful games despite all the new potential that immense CPU (and accompanying GPU) power provides. We need something that will make us immerse thoroughly in games, universes in ways we never did before. Star Citizen is trying that. And its a major step in the right direction.
- ethbr0 4y agoOr, it's trying to create OS/360 with a team helmed by a designer. A game with 10x the level of interactivity does not take 10x as long to create. It takes 10^10. Star Citizen is the exact opposite of every lesson we've learned about successful project management and software development in the last 75 years.
- iancmceachern 4y agoVery true. This is what makes games like Red Dead Redemption II so amazing. In the end making a game is like any other complex engineering project. The hard part isn't conceiving of something awesome worth doing, concepting a world, the dreaming part. The hard part is wrapping your collective head around the magnitude of work required, managing and putting limits on that, and successfully dividing up and doling out the work so that it's done in close to the promised time frame. There is a famous saying I'm forgetting, something about anyone can work on something forever, successful teams ship product.
- ethbr0 4y agoThere's an argument to be made that Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design) has been iterating on the same game since ~1995, and releasing as they hit milestones and polish they were comfortable with. Which seems like an incredibly reasonable way to approach doing something complicated...
- iancmceachern 4y agoKind of. it's really more that they have refined a game engine over that time, and used that to make better and better individual games. In that sense it's more of a platform thing. They have been working on a platform that has allowed them to leverage and share work across individual games.
- unity1001 4y agoYoure right in all of those. Except, we don't want the product of another successful project management and software development. We want to move forward. Current games also take 10^10 as long to create compared to the games of 1970s. The effort was put into making these games. They materialized. The next generation of games wont materialize without someone putting in the effort and the money.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wly_cdgr 4y agoTons of innovative games come out every year. Star Citizen is cool and all but it's hardly innovative. It IS a thirteen year old boy's dream game, though, I'll give it that
- SebastianKra 4y agoThe last thing games need right now is a bigger scope. AAA projects are playing it safe, precisely because they're so big that failing would be catastrophic. Meanwhile, smaller games are redefining the medium. Disco Elysium has impressive writing and an interesting perspective on politics. FromSoftware games look technically worse but are teeming with creativity. Echo VR showed me the value of social presence in multiplayer games. And Outer Wilds... oh, Outer Wilds. Also your assumption that "bigger == better", reminds me of how some people used to think that realism and realistic graphics where the ultimate goal.
- HKH2 4y agoNeed? What will happen if you don't get it?